The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connector assemblies.
Due to their favorable electrical characteristics, coaxial cables and connectors have grown in popularity for interconnecting electronic devices and peripheral systems. The connectors include an inner conductor coaxially disposed within an outer conductor, with a dielectric material separating the inner and outer conductors. A typical application utilizing coaxial cable connectors is a radio-frequency (RF) application having RF connectors designed to work at radio frequencies in the UHF and/or VHF range.
Typically, one or more connectors are mounted to a circuit board of an electronic device at an input/output port of the device and extend through an exterior housing of the device for connection with a coaxial cable connector. Some systems include a plurality of connectors held in a common housing. One particular example of a system that uses multiple connectors is a backplane module having a plurality of board mounted connectors with a separate mating assembly for mating with a daughtercard module. The mating assembly includes a housing holding a plurality of coaxial cable connectors, which are connected to the board mounted connectors by a cable assembly having lead end connectors individually terminated to corresponding board mounted connectors. The daughtercard module is mated with the mating assembly.
Typical backplane systems using RF connectors are not without disadvantages. For instance, each of the lead end connectors are typically individually and separately mated with the board connectors, which is time consuming and increases the cost of assembly. Additionally, the spacing between the housing of the mating assembly and the board connectors may be very small, such as less than one inch, making the assembly process difficult and time consuming. Manipulating a large number of connections for mating also increases time and complexity.
Additionally, coaxial cables occupy space within limited areas and volumes of various applications, such as within a computer system. For example, coaxial cables are routed to and from printed circuit boards and therefore need to be flexible. The coaxial cables are typically bent in order to provide proper routing between components. However, the bending may strain the mating interfaces of the cables. As such, the connections between the cables and reciprocal contacts may be out of position.